To be entirely honest with you, I debated whether or not to publish today. The article is from January, which is practically a thousand years ago. Ultimately, you are reading this because I have read a bunch of these lately and I am fed up with this shit.

This time, it is yet another ‘omg teenagers and video games’ story. How many times do we have to go over this? Bad parenting begets bad kids. Good parenting? Good kids. Fuck. I feel like I just wrote the most important book on parenting ever.

I love being Canadian (I’m also Irish, but that is a story for another day). I would eat pealmeal bacon poutine off a lumberjack who just said hoser, but the fact is I will also admit that the Americans do a really great job with their media. Except Fox, that is. Fox is kind of the tinfoil hat-wearing cousin. We have a few good papers here – National Post and the Globe & Mail are staples in my house – but they cannot hold a candle to the New York Times. To put it mildly, those bitches know their shit.

I was stunned to read ‘Video Games and the Depressed Teenager‘. Granted, the author, Roni Caryn Rabin, evidently has a history of fabricating drivel. Who amongst us can forget the compelling read that is ‘Is SpongeBob SquarePants bad for children’? Or the ground-breaking ‘C-Sections pose respiratory risks for some small preemies’? I’m not linking to her articles. She would love that shit.

Far be it from me to deny anyone the pleasure of writing a salacious headline. Let’s try a couple ourselves.

‘CLAMS ARE NOT A FRUIT’!

‘BEAR OPENS DISCOTHEQUE!’

See? Anyone can do it.

‘DO VIDEO GAMES CAUSE DEPRESSION?!’ Well if there is allegedly a study about it, AND it’s on the internet – well, obviously it must be right.

Let’s stop and sum things up. Perhaps the most glaring problem, for me, is the source. We are going to overlook the fact that this study seems to come from Singapore. Yeah. I said it. This is the land where bungee jumping is illegal. Chewing gum sales are illegal. In fact, I am fairly sure that just by publishing this post, I just got added to a list somewhere.

Anyway. We are bypassing all of that. Culturally, Singapore and North America are different. We can all agree.

Ultimately, this issue is about responsibility. It is about accountability. Goddamn it, it’s about common sense. If you wet yourself after playing fucking Halo for 36 hours straight, who do you blame? Your pants? Of course not. Your bladder? No. Your car company, because the car you drove was their model? Preposterous. You blame yourself.

If you play more video games than your friends, so what? I play, hands down, more video games than almost anyone I know. I hold down a job. I have friends. A family. A collection of men. It’s called ‘moderation’, muthafucka.

Video games don’t make you violent. They don’t depress you. They aren’t an addictive substance.

It is not ok to blame video games for your problems. It is not ok to blame video games, the studios, and anyone who has ever had anything to do with games for your problems.

As a general rule, I think Etsy is the internet’s equivalent to a flea market. There’s the weird, creepy guy who is trying to sell you t-shirts with wolves on them. Wallets with wolves on them. A keychain with wolves on them. There are things with wolves and there is a lot of things and he is not shy about wanting you to buy them.

Then, there’s the discount crap that even China shuns – who in their right mind wants a Hello Kitty toilet seat? Let’s not forget about the knock-offs. And over here, there’s the overweight 40-year-old mom [trying to be 14] whose monthly subscription to What The Fuck Craft Shit Is This? has inspired her to bedazzle and bejewel every dollar store item from here to Vancouver.

However. In the midst of the ocean of junk, there’s weird little corners. They are filled with interesting things that are obviously not official, but you can tell that some level of skill was required and you don’t mind paying for it. Cheap games. The ability to bulk buy DVDs.

I have many loves in my life, and one of them is jewellery. It either has to be expensive, or unique, but I love it. Hence, the love of flea markets. Below is a thing of beauty. It’s so awesome that I saved this picture a while ago, then I went to get the link for this post and they no longer had it.

It has been several months since the iPhone and I started our affair of love. Love? Let me explain.

As a general rule, I think love is stupid. Judge me as you will, I think too many people use it as an excuse to do things that are, under normal circumstances, utterly unpermissible. ‘Crime of passion’, general erosion of acceptable behaviourial habits, etc. These are all things that love, according to society, forgives.

‘Oh I have anniversary plans with a boyfriend so I can’t go to an extremely close friend’s birthday event’. Excuse me?

HORSESHIT. All of it. Love isn’t blind, it’s stupid. Or so I thought until I met the iPhone. The iPhone is the second most useful gadget I have ever owned. It can’t quite compare to the PS3, you know. Here’s some reasons why I love it.

1. The apps: Goddamn, I love apps. I have 250 on my phone. I don’t use that many. But apps like Rocket Radar and the GO train one have made my life infinitely easier. When is the next 510 coming? Beep boop beep, oh hey, 6 minutes.

2. The ease I can snap a picture and email it. No more freezing, belligerent little twerp of a phone being unable to do so.

3. Video. I take videos of everything now. I could never do that on my BlackBerry.

I’ve logged an embarrassing amount of time in Skyrim so far. Hours and hours of time. Time well spent, I’d argue. Anyway, playing it so heavily has made me realize that as great as it is, there’s a couple things I wish that there was a patch for. Sure, they’re slowly rolling out a patch for the lagging issues, but let’s prioritize here.

1. 99 problems and a horse is one: This goddamn horse! I’ll admit, he sometimes is useful. The other day, I had this whole Necromancer situation going on. Horse was neighing in the background, and I was all ‘sweet, he’s cheering for me!’ Then, I turned around. Imagine my surprise when I saw the dead body of one of those hideous spider things! It tried to surprise me and the horse killed it! Then, he pawed the ground, being all ‘oh hey girl, no big deal’. I was stunned. *thumps chest* Respect.

However, despite these moments of triumph, it’s mostly me screaming obscenities at the screen after he gets his damn self killed. Earlier this week, I was riding along, and we ran into two dragons. Fucking Lydia was nowhere to be found, so I fought one. After a godawful sound from the horse, I turned around to find he’d been killed. Reload game. Swearing when I realize that the auto-save feature is only useful if you haven’t spent 3 hours exploring the map without using said feature.

2. Let’s talk about these goddamn dragons. Aside from the fact you are having a perfectly normal day before one lands in front of you without warning, shrieking its brains out like it has something to say that I want to hear, they do things that drive me crazy. I hate when they don’t land and instead spend their time shrieking at you and attacking you from the air. How the fuck is this fair? Frost, fire, and of course those goddamn arrows don’t do a thing to kill them.

3. Lydia: I hate her. We go through phases where we are friends, but mostly I hate her. I have her around because, let’s face, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Also, she can carry a ton of shit, and LOVES to kill spiders. I am, however, incredibly fed up with her haughty attitude whenever she’s asked to carry something – ‘I am sworn to carry your burdens’ – I feed, clothe, and shelter you, bitch. Is carrying a few things THAT much to ask?

Also. Let’s not forget her half-assed ‘slay the dragon!’ shouts, rather than help.

4. Circling back to the horse. Why can’t I whistle for it? There have been so many times where I have been busy killing bitches, and when you’re slashing your way through skeletons, bandits, and whatever, it’s understandable that someone who didn’t have to be involved in that would run away. But horse-and-go-seek is such an annoying thing.

As most of my regular readers know, I am not a big fan of adhering to the regular rules of grammar. I like using lower case. It’s a form of self-expression. It works for people like e.e. cummings. It’s like my personal little slice of typography that very few people can identify me on, since in my regular, professional life, I was required to do the whole proper English stuff. Heaven forbid a client finds out what I anonymously do on my personal time.

However. I have recently begun a new chapter in my life. I switched jobs, and in general, just spring-cleaned my life. Among other changes, like making less time for toxic friends and relaxing, I’m now fortunate to be employed by somewhere that not only is much more progressive than previous, but also has a lot more budget to work with.

Anyway. A big part of this blog has been responsibility to my readers, and you can all consider yourself sufficiently informed. 🙂

so there has been a lack of posting for a lot of reasons, mainly because i’m playing skyrim. anyway. sometimes i come up for air and oh. my. god. how COOL is retronaut? i fucking LOVE that site. love. it. here’s a quick and dirty post about the evolution of video game controllers.